If
by Chicleeblair
Summary: Meredith Grey did not grow up with a family. But she could have, in many different ways. Collection of AUs


Thatcher turns from the boxes of dishes that he is unpacking and trying to fit into the tiny cupboards of the apartment he has hastily moved himself and his daughter into. Meredith is padding down the hall, her tiny footsteps barely audible. She comes into view, in her purple pajamas, one hand dragging a teddy bear along with her, and the other rubbing her sleepy eyes.

"Morning, Peanut," Thatcher calls, trying to sound normal, jovial for his tiny girl. She was the only light in the house that had so many shadows, but since they moved she has been quiet, thoughtful. He is working hard to bring the bubbly back into her.

"Morning, Daddy," she says, climbing up into a kitchen chair. "Can I have waffles?"

"Of course," Thatcher says. He is hopeful at her request. It has been weeks since she asked for something, instead of just agreeing with whatever he suggested with a small shrug. She rests her head on her arms, and her thick blonde hair hides her face from view, muffling her words when she speaks.

Thatcher comes over, and pushes the hair back so there is just space enough between her hair and arms for her tiny mouth and nose to poke out.

"Tell me again where Mommy is?" she asks. Thatcher sighs and pulls out a chair next to her.

"Mommy is in Boston," he explains slowly. "She had to go there to be a better doctor."

"Why didn't we go with her?"

"Because Mommy and Daddy are getting a divorce."

"She won't be my mommy any more?"

Thatcher reaches out and strokes his daughter's silky hair. "Peanut, she'll always be your mommy. You'll go visit her sometimes. But some grown-ups decided that it was best for you to live with me for a while. Since Mommy has to work so much."

Meredith nods slowly. "Is it okay that I miss her?"

_Oh Meredith. _"Of course. She probably misses you too. Mommy loves you, baby, but Mommy and Daddy just don't love each other any more."

Meredith nods, and is silent for a while, the onslaught of questions seemingly done for now, though Thatcher has no doubt that they will resurface many times over the next few months.

He makes her waffles, and she eats them in tiny bites, but she eats enough to satisfy him. When she disappears to her room and reappears methodically dressed, he claps for her. Then her reaches down and scoops her up, tossing her up in the air, jiggling her and tickling her until her brilliant giggle bursts out and she smiles widely, shrieking to be put down, but not very emphatically. When he finally does let her down and tells her to go put on her shoes, she does so quickly and runs back for him to braid her hair. He never thought he'd be the kind of Mr. Mom that could braid hair.

When he is securing the pink elastic to the bottom tail of the long braid, Meredith looks back at him, her eyes solemn. "Daddy?" she says.

"Yes, Peanut?"

"If Mommy had to go away to be a better doctor, I don't want to be a doctor when I grow up."

Thatcher always expects her to go back on that promise. For her entire life she talked about nothing but being a surgeon to her mother. To his surprise, though, she does not. Her aptitude for science never goes away, and she is (before he can blink) a well-known pharmaceutical researcher in New York. On her twentieth birthday, when she is still in school at NYU, she comes home with a very good-looking medical resident. Thatcher can only wish her better luck than he had and ask: "Meredith… you don't like doctors? What changed?"

Her answer? "He's not a doctor, Daddy. He's Derek."

/ / / /

"Meredith, sweetie, it's time to get up!" Meredith opens her eyes and sits up, watching her mommy open the blinds in the window. Mommy is smiling, and she is happy. She is a lot happier lately. She hugs Meredith, and reads to her and sometimes, sometimes even stays home with her instead of taking her to her new daycare. All the happiness makes Meredith almost forget the days when Mommy cried a lot. Before and right after they moved to Boston. She even almost forgot the day of the accident-that-wasn't-an-accident. Almost.

"Can I play with my dollies for a little while before I get dressed?" Meredith asks hopefully.

Mommy sits on the end of Meredith's bed, smoothing out the pink comforter that she got for her sixth birthday. "Not today, sweetheart. Today is a big day, remember?"

Meredith thinks, biting her lip. "Um… No?" she says. She remembers Mommy telling her things that were Very Important last night, but they were having spaghetti and Mommy had not remembered to cut it up the way her daddy always did, so Meredith was having to work very hard not to get messy. Mommy still did not like messy.

Mommy's eyes narrow, and Meredith is afraid for a second that she is angry that Meredith doesn't remember the important things, but her face soon smoothes out. "Well," she says. "We're going to the park, and someone is coming with us. Do you remember who?"

Meredith says it before she can think. "Daddy?" she asks, and flinches. This time her mother's face does get stern, she looks away from her daughter, and Meredith very cautiously pulls her legs up to her chest and waits.

But her mommy does not yell, instead she turns back to Meredith. "Not Daddy, sweetheart. Daddy won't be seeing you for a while. He's very busy. He's not being a good daddy right now."

"He's usually a good daddy," Meredith points out, as her mommy goes to her dresser to pull out clothes.

"I know," her mother says softly. "He was good at that at least. Now get your clothes on so I can brush your hair. It's a rat's nest."

Meredith giggled. "There are no rats in my hair, Mommy!" she protests, but she dresses; only needing help with her shoelaces.

She and Mommy are walking down the stairs when the front door opens. "Anyone home?" A deep voice says.

Meredith let's go of her Mommy's hand (which she took on her own for the stairs. Mommy's still learning to offer it to her) "Richard!" she cries running down the stairs and diving into his strong arms.

He spins her around and then hugs her close to him, his scratchy beard tickling her cheek. "Hey there, munchkin!" he says. "Good morning, Ellis."

Mommy comes over and smiles at him. Then they both look at Meredith. Ellis shrugs. "She'll have to know some time," she says. Meredith does not know what she is talking about at first, but then her mother _kisses_ Richard.

Meredith pulls back, but Richard holds onto her tightly. "That's what Mommies and Daddies do!" she yells. "You're not my daddy!"

"I'm not, I know," Richard says soothingly, putting his arm around Mommy. "But it's something people who love each other do."

"Do you love my mommy?" Meredith asks curiously.

"Yes," Richard says softly.

"Do you love me?"

"Very much."

Meredith nods after thinking about it for a minute, and then kisses him on the cheek. "Okay," she decides. "Can we go to the park now?"

It is not long before Meredith is not the only child anymore. She doesn't know how she will feel about this at first, but Charles isn't such a bad baby brother. If she's good at school, Richard and Mommy let her come to the hospital and sit with the nurses and watch how the hospital works.

When she is nineteen, she drives up to Boston from Dartmouth to meet them at a conference where they are both being honored. After the ceremony, she slips out onto a hotel balcony with a glass of wine she swiped when her mother and stepfather weren't looking.

"Are you cold?" a voice asks her, just after she shivers. Before she can answer, a man's suit jacket is being wrapped around her shoulders. She meets the fantastic blue eyes of the man whose jacket it is. "Derek Shepherd."

"Meredith Grey-Webber," she responds, with a smile. "Yes, their daughter."

"I wasn't going to ask that," Derek says, with a smile, leaning back against the railing. "I was wondering what a beautiful girl like you was doing out here all alone."

"Meeting you, apparently."

/ / / /

"That child is _broken_, Thatcher!" Susan insists, standing in front of her husband in their living room. "She is most definitely not okay."

"She's going through a hard time," Thatcher says appealingly, leaning back in his chair. "She'll be okay. She's strong."

Susan shakes her head. The girl who left Seattle with her mother a year and a half ago may have been strong, but the little girl who they flew across country to bring back to their new home is not okay. That girl did not say a word through an entire plane ride and only uttered a few phrases once they got home. Susan has to coax her to get dressed in the morning. At her new school, the teacher says she sits at her desk, staring straight ahead. Only her tests are an anomaly, all questions answered correctly before half her classmates are finished.

When Susan brings this up with Thatcher he still insists that she will be fine. Susan is doubtful.

On a Friday afternoon, two weeks after the last of Meredith's things were shipped to them by an aunt, Susan walks into the kitchen and pulls out the carton of strawberry ice cream Thatcher bought, insisting that it was Meredith's favorite. The carton is unopened, and as she looks at it, Susan feels the baby kick inside of her. She puts a hand to her slowly swelling belly. She wants to make things better before the baby appears, in the hopes that this new child will bring them closer.

After all, she fixed the damage that Ellis Grey had done to one person. Surely she could fix it for another.

Ice cream and spoon in hand, she goes upstairs to the small bedroom that they hastily arranged for Meredith. She knocks on the door, and is surprised when the small voice answers, "Come in."

"Hi Meredith," Susan says, turning on the light. The darkness does not suite the bedroom of a six-year-old girl, but Meredith never seems to care enough to turn the light on.

Meredith appears. She had been sitting on the floor on the other side of the bed. Now she stands in front of Susan, one bare foot nervously rubbing the opposite pant leg.

"Did I do something wrong?" she asks in a voice barely above a whisper.

"No, sweetheart," Susan says, trying to be quiet and cheerful at the same time. "I have a treat for you. Come sit with me." She feels like she is coaxing a timid animal out of hiding.

She sits on the bed and pats the spot next to her for Meredith. The girl stares at her appraisingly for a minute, and then climbs up onto the bed. She is a mess of limbs for a minute, and she suddenly seems like any other seven-year-old, until she is sitting cross-legged in front of her stepmother, once again wearing the haunted facial expression that makes her seem much older.

Susan silently holds out the bowl, but Meredith recoils. "It's red!" she says in horror, similarly to the reaction she had had when Susan made spaghetti two nights before. Thatcher had gotten up and made Meredith macaroni and cheese.

Susan sighs. "It's not, sweetie. It's pink. Like those curtains," she points. "Or like the pretty flowers outside in the park. You like those." It is a guess, since she has only seen Meredith look at the flowers once, but it was also the one time she saw her smile.

"Yes," Meredith says. She eyes the ice cream for a minute, and Susan knows that she wants it

"Do you want me to taste it for you? Make sure it's not bad?"

Meredith considers this, and nods. Susan takes the spoon and takes a bite of ice cream. She was always a mint chocolate chip girl, herself, but it is good and she smiles.

Meredith watches her for a minute, and then accepts the bowl that is handed to her. Susan watches as she eats. Small bites, very carefully not making a mess. When she is done, Susan takes the bowl. She starts to ease off the bed, thinking that this might be enough progress for the time being.

"Don't leave," Meredith says. Susan quickly puts the bowl on the bedside table and sits back again.

"Okay," she says.

Meredith stares at her again. It is a stare that would be almost frightening if it were not so heartbreaking.

"Blood is red," she finally says.

Susan nods, wondering where on earth this is going. Will the girl finally talk about it? What the school therapist has been trying to get out of her since she arrived.

"I want to be a surgeon. Like my mommy. She wasn't afraid of blood." Meredith looks away, at the closed window. "I guess if I'm going to be… I can't be afraid of blood."

"I guess not," Susan agrees.

"A lot of blood is scary," Meredith insists, and then thinks for a minute. "But maybe not everything red."

"No. Roses can be red, and they're pretty. And apples," Susan points out.

"And fall leaves," Meredith adds. "And the good jell-o. I guess I can't be scared of it. It makes me sad though."

"That's okay," Susan assures her, touching her knee gently. Meredith does not jerk away.

Meredith nods. "You're not my mom," she informs Susan a second later.

"I know."

"My mom's dead."

"Yes."

Meredith nods, slowly, processing all of this. Finally she says, "I'm tired."

"Okay. Hop into your pajamas and brush your teeth," Susan says. She takes the bowl to the kitchen to wash it out. Thatcher is reading the paper.

"You've been in there a while," he points out.

"Yes. I think she's getting better," Susan says. "Some."

"See? I told you. She'll be okay."

Susan shakes her head and goes back to Meredith's room to find her already in bed, with her covers up to her chin.

"All set?" Susan asks, hand poised over the light switch.

"Can I have my bear?" Meredith asks hesitantly. "I hid him in the closet and now I can't reach him." Susan nods and goes over to the closet, reaching up to the high shelf. She can just feel the furry foot of a teddy bear and she pulls it down, putting it next to Meredith.

"There you go," she says, and goes towards the door.

"Susan?"

"Yes, Meredith?"

"Could you…" she pauses, a finger running along the edge of her covers. "Could you kiss me goodnight? Even though I'm not your daughter?"

Susan's heart melts. "Of course, sweetheart," she says. She comes over and gently kisses the small forehead.

"Thank you," Meredith whispers.

It is the first night that they are not woken up by her screams. They do not disappear, and she does not heal immediately. But, a week later, Susan catches her giggling at a book she is reading. In a month, she has come to love Meredith's smile, and begun doing all she can to bring it is.

There is a relapse when Lexie is born. Meredith appears downstairs one day, knapsack in hand, informing Susan "now that you have your own kid, you don't need me." Then she starts crying. Susan and Thatcher both take her to her room and tell her over and over that they will always need her. She may not be completely convinced, but when Lexie is big enough to play with, things are better.

And before Susan knows it, Meredith is in college. She takes off time after school to travel, before medical school and returns with pictures of far away places that absolutely enchant her little sisters. It is only Susan who knows what she means when she flashes a picture of a hotel room with blood red curtains and murmurs. "I hated this place, but everyone else thought it was great."

After the trip, she has a hard time deciding whether or not to do her internship at Seattle Grace. She loves Seattle, but she has always had a need to discover new places. After a while, though, the appeal of the Seattle Grace internship program wins over and she moves into the old townhouse she inherited from her mother and gets some roommates. Susan never hears her mention that it was in this house that her mother had first tried to kill herself. Maybe Meredith does not even remember that, with such a traumatic memory to replace it.

During the first months of her internship her family rarely sees her and when they do she is gushing about the man she is dating. She even brings him by for dinner one Sunday, and even Thatcher remembers that Meredith has never brought a man home. Six months after her return to Seattle, though, she comes by the house late one night. She is bedraggled, exhausted and devastated. Susan can tell she has been drinking, although she denies it profusely.

As soon as she enters the house, and sees Susan sitting in the living room, she bursts into tears. Susan leads her to her old bedroom and takes off her shoes, and lets her lay down on the bed. She cries for a long time before she is settled down enough for Susan to ask, "What is it, darling?". She is sitting on the end of her stepdaughter's bed, and stroking her hair gently.

"He's—he's—he's married." Meredith sobs.

"Derek?"

"Yes," Meredith whimpers. "And she's prettier than me, and poised, and perfect."

"It'll be okay," Susan says calmly. "I've seen the way that man looks at you, Meredith. It may take him a while to realize it, but he'll be the one for you."

"How do you know?" Meredith asks hoarsely, beginning to fight off sleep.

Susan thinks of Thatcher, all those years ago, trying to push her away because of how broken he was. She remembers the little girl that this young woman once was. "Trust me," she assures. "I know."

Then, as is their habit, she leans down and kisses Meredith on the forehead. "Get some sleep. I won't wake you."

"…have a shift."

"I'll call Dr. Webber, you know he has a soft spot for you." Meredith does not protest.

At five o'clock the next afternoon, a man shows up on their doorstep with an apology on his lips. Meredith is sitting in the living room nursing a cup of tea, and Susan glances at the door.

"Go," she tells her stepdaughter. Meredith, as mute as she was at six, does not speak. "Meredith," Susan says quietly. "Go."

Meredith glares at her, but stands up, pulling down the sleeves on her torn up Dartmouth shirt and wrapping her arms around herself. Susan looks out the kitchen window and sees them standing in the yard. Meredith yells. She beats him with her small fists, but he catches her hands and kisses her. Then, from his car he pulls out a pile of papers. Susan smiles to herself and sets the table for four.

/ / / /

Meredith thinks for a long time that all parents fight as much as hers do. Her whole life, in Seattle or in New York, she can remember the raised voices that are oddly muffled reaching her ears at night. They always try to keep her from hearing, but she always hears. It is routine. In the mornings, her mother rushes off to the hospital, and her father picks up the apartment before walking with Meredith as far as the subway stop. Then he catches a cab to work and she goes to school. Normal. Dad is home when she gets home, ready with a snack. She does her homework, her mother comes home for dinner, or not.

If she does though, dinner will be tense. Meredith will work hard not to say something wrong. Only speak when spoken to. She cannot joke with Dad like she normally does. It is on those nights that she tries to go to sleep as early as possible to avoid the yelling. Other nights, she lies awake, telling herself stories of when she will be the greatest surgeon on he west coast. She wants to go back to Seattle when she grows up. She will win the Harper-Avery like her mother, and get a big fancy banquet, and Dad will be there, smiling. Maybe even Mom could make it. And Derek will be there too.

Derek is her best friend. He is older, much older, but he never seems to mind it when she is around. She sits next to him on the subway on the way to the private school, the combined K-12 that they both attend. She had met him the first day she lived in the apartment.

She had been sitting on the stairs, so that she was out of the way while Mommy and Daddy unpacked, and Mommy snapped about how the job in Boston was better, but because Daddy could get a job in New York that was where they went. Meredith did not understand why they just could not stay in Seattle.

Sitting on the steps, she was suddenly soaked with water. She jumped and started to cry, just for a minute, before she looked up to see what it was.

"Mark, you idiot, it's just a kid! Not a sister!" a voice called. There was a clamoring and two big boys came running down the stairs towards her. One of them had short spiky hair, and a mean smile that she did not like. The other had black hair that was curly and he smiled at her.

"Hey, I'm sorry. Mark tossed a water balloon down here, thinking you were my sister."

"It's okay," Meredith had said, hoping her tears would look like water-balloon water. "Can I throw one at her when she comes since he messed it up?" Nancy never forgave her for that one.

She is eight and a half when she realizes how weird her family is. She falls asleep on Derek's shoulder on the subway, and when he shakes her awake they are at school. "Sorry," she says, rubbing her eyes. "My parents were doing it last night. The yelling thing," she shrugs.

Derek, who never seems to find her as annoying as he does her sisters, frowns at her. "Fighting?"

"Yeah," she sighs. "Since Mom was home. Didn't yours? Before… I mean…" she trails off. Derek never talks about his dad.

"No. My parents never fought. Or not a lot." He stops and looks down at her, even though all of his friends from the high school are calling to him, and Mark is making faces at him. "Listen, Mer, if you ever need to… need somewhere to sleep, come over to our place. You can sleep in Rachel's room or something."

It is only this offer that gets her spending more time at the Shepherds' instead of just with Derek and Mark. When they go to college, she still sleeps over in Rachel's room several nights a week. There are the occasional jokes about Meredith marrying one of the boys one day, but usually the joke is Mark, because they have had a prank war going since that first water balloon. Otherwise, most people think of her as Rachel's friend.

Then she comes home from college for Christmas her freshman year. Her parents have taken a trip to Switzerland.

"I'll never understand that," she tells Rachel on the phone. "They hate each other, and yet they go on vacations acting like thirteen-year-olds in love."

Meredith has Christmas dinner at the Shepherd's. Derek is sitting at the opposite end of the table from her, looking exhausted. He is an intern now, at Manhattan General. Occasionally he'll call her to tell her a story of a really good case, it makes her happy to know that there is something he shares with her and not his sisters.

After dinner, she finds herself sitting on the same stairs she sat on when she met him. He drifts out too, maybe looking for her, maybe not, but he sits down next to her.

"I miss you," she tells him. "College boys are stupid."

"Like middle school boys were? Like high school boys were? Like Mark is?" he teases, gently.

She shrugs. "You're exhausted," she points out. "Maybe I don't want to be a surgeon if it ruins your good looks like this."

He chuckles. "You tell it like it is, don't you, my Meri?"

Suddenly she cannot take it any more. "God damn it, Derek!" she exclaims. "Don't say that unless you mean it!"

"What?" he asks, taken aback.

"Call me yours! I have a family, because of you. I have my best girl friend in your sister! Your mother is more of a mother to me than my own. But all I want is you!"

Derek looks at her and shakes his head. "You're seveneen," he points out, like it is supposed to mean anything any more.

She laughs bitterly. "Are you that blind? When has that ever mattered with us? You've ruined boys my own age for me, Derek." And then they are kissing. And Meredith half expects to be bombarded by water balloons.

Those don't come until their wedding reception when she has had just enough champagne to chase after Mark and Nancy, brandishing one of her high-heels as a weapon.

Eventually, her world is just like she dreamed about when she was seven, when she was eight, when she was sixteen. She and Derek move to Seattle and own a huge parcel of land. They become prominent neurosurgeons at Seattle Grace, while her parents use her mother's retirement money to travel, until her mom gets sicker and her father takes care of her in New York.

One evening, sitting at the bar across from the hospital where the hospital staff spends time, Meredith says, "You know, it can't be easy for him. I mean, Mom will be relieving her residency years. That was when the fighting got bad… do you know I found out that they met on a European tour? It's why they never fight while traveling."

Derek laughs. "Wow. Your parents are something else, Meredith. Oh, did you hear? They filled the chief position."

"Finally, I thought they would have a cow when Mom turned it down."

"Yeah… apparently Richard Webber took it."

Meredith has flashbacks to nights lying in bed, and the name Richard being yelled by one of her parents. She shrugs the memories off. Derek saved her from those a long time ago.

Soon after, she wins a medical award for a clinical trial she heads with the help of an intern. Yang is mainly interested in Cardio, but she helped with the Katie Bryce case, and she's Meredith's age since she took the time to get an MD/PhD, so she was the one Meredith chose to help her on the case.

Meredith's parents are in the front row, with her mother thankfully lucid, and Derek was, of course, in attendance.

/ / / /

"Mom would kill you if she found you out here with that!" Lexie exclaims, when she climbs up into hers and Molly's tree house to find her stepsister in there taking a drag off a cigarette.

Meredith eyes the eleven-year-old. "Going to tell?" she asks, although Lexie thinks that she seems more curious than actually worried.

"Well, no," Lexie says. This is obvious. Meredith is her big sister, telling on her would mean trouble, just like she gives to Molly if Molly tells on her.

"So what's the problem?" Meredith asks, and then jumps down from the tree house.

Lexie scrambles down after her, and sits next to her on the backyard picnic table. Meredith rolls her eyes and stands up. "Are you going to follow me everywhere?" she demands, pushing her hair away from her face.

Lexie loves Meredith's hair. It is faded now, but when she first got to Seattle it was bright pink.

"I… I guess not. I just thought you might want someone to talk to. I mean, since your mom doesn't want you or—oops!" Lexie claps her hands to her mouth. "I'm sorry!" she exclaims. "That was a bad thing to say."

Meredith laughs again, but it's not the happy laugh Lexie heard her use when a boy walked her home last week. "No, that's about right, Lex. My mother decided that she could not wait another two years to start traveling for work, so she dumped me off here on the estranged father I haven't seen since I was Molly's age."

"My dad's not estranged." Lexie protests, but she is thinking more about what Meredith said. Mom said that Meredith's mom was not very nice, but she was still her mom.

"Do you even know what the word means?" Lexie hesitates. "Go look it up and then let me know what you think."

Lexie stares at her, realizes that she is serious and then runs inside to the dictionary. When she comes back she almost expects Meredith to have used this moment as an excuse to disappear, but she's still there.

"Yeah," Lexie says, climbing back onto the picnic table and examining her own brown hair to see if it could do pink. "That's a right word."

"I know," Meredith agrees "So what do you do for fun around here?"

Lexie shrugs. "Go to the park. Read. I read a lot. Ride horses. Um… sometimes we go on the ferryboat. Molly and I really like those."

"I guess that's what I get for asking an eleven-year-old," Meredith mused to herself.

"I'm in advanced classes!" Lexie protests.

"Do you want a medal? You want to be a doctor, right? You need advanced classes. Did you say ferryboats?"

"Uh huh. But I thought you didn't wanna be a doctor; why do you know so much about it?"

Meredith shrugged. "My mom wants me to be. Trust me I know what it takes. I also know I don't have it." Lexie disagrees with this; she's seen Meredith's textbooks. They're all highlighted in even though it's the beginning of the semester.

"So, Lexie," Meredith says, standing up again. "Do you think your mother would let me take you to ride ferryboats?"

"I think she'd be glad you were leaving the house… oh… I'm not supposed to say that."

Meredith stared at her. "Exactly how bad are you at keeping secrets?"

Lexie considers this. "I'm pretty good if they're important ones. Or if they would get someone in trouble."

Meredith nods. "Good enough. Have you ever noticed that the tree outside your room is very climbable?"

Lexie has no idea what she is talking about, but nods anyway, because she really wants to ride the ferryboat.

Her mother gives them money and gives Meredith strict instructions on watching out for Lexie. Lexie can tell that Mom is nervous, but too eager to get Meredith to be part of the family to do anything, plus Molly has the flu and is getting sick _everywhere _so Mom's busy with that.

The boat ride is fun, and Lexie starts to think maybe Meredith likes her. And she never divulges Meredith's secrets.

She does not tell that Meredith comes into her room nearly every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night and sneaks out the window, shimmying down the tree. Mostly she does not tell, because when Meredith comes back, smelling of smoke and other things Lexie cannot identify at eleven, or twelve, or thirteen but at seventeen she will realize is tequila, she often does not make it back to her own room, but curls up in Lexie's bed, her heat warming her sister.

Meredith is a puzzle to everyone in the family but Lexie. Her mother thinks she is throwing potential away, but Lexie knows she does _want_ to be a doctor, but she thinks she can't. Her father thinks she is beyond his help, but Lexie knows Meredith would be grateful if he would just meet her eye every once in a while.

It is Lexie, and only Lexie, who she tells about her mother's condition, when she flies home from Europe early. She only tells Lexie when her med school applications go in the mail.

Some times Lexie wants to kill her. When she insists that she's not good enough for this or that or the other and Lexie knows better. When she picks fights with her parents or even Molly just because. And, when Lexie is dead asleep after taking one of the hardest exams thus far in her med school life and she is awoken by what can only be a drunk text from Meredith that reads _OMG guy at bar so hot_

Lexie replies, purposefully, at five in the morning Seattle time.

_Hi. Hope your head hurts a lot for waking me up. How's the guy in the bar?_

She's not expecting the _Oh god, the sex was amazing. He's my BOSS. Don't tell _message.

Lexie has to admit, though, as stupid and ridiculous as it seems, she is happier for her sister when she sees the black haired man at her side at Lexie's mother's funeral than she was for Molly when Eric proposed.

"Dad won't look at me," Meredith whispers to Lexie when they sit down together at the bar later that week. Meredith has had a hell of a week, between Lexie's Mom's funeral and her friend Cristina's failed wedding. With Cristina finally asleep, she Lexie and Derek go to Joe's. Derek is playing darts 'imagining Burke's face'.

Lexie sips her drink and shakes her head as her sister downs another shot. "He's probably still not sure what to think. I mean you work at Seattle Grace. I'm about to work there."

"They wouldn't let me in the OR! They wouldn't let me anywhere near as soon as Derek told them I moved in with you guys when I was sixteen. Otherwise maybe…"

"You just became a resident. No offense, but your presence would not have made a difference. Dad's also probably freaked because he almost lost you this year, and now he lost mom. And your mom."

"Dad lost her a long time ago," Meredith said sadly.

Lexie sighed. "Well… hey… drink up. In two weeks you'll have to put a suitable distance between yourself and your underling. That meaning me."

"Hmm, fun. You'll follow me around; ask me questions and making me tell you to go look it up on your own. What's new about that?"

Lexie nodded over her shoulder. "Well, he is for one". Derek had come by and put his arms around Meredith. She leaned back and smiled up at him.

Lexie stole the next shot that Joe poured for her. She'd never been a huge fan of tequila, but it worked for Meredith. She wouldn't mind having her own McDreamy.

A/N These were fun. I'm thinking about expanding one of them, but I'm not sure which. Let me know your favorite in the reviews, okay?


End file.
